Saturday, April 29, 2017

The most emotionally and spiritually moving passages of
scripture are often those that employ literary devices. Especially effective is the layering of
multiple devices within the same passage.

I am not saying that the only moving passages are those that
employ literary devices. Some passages
derive their power solely from their substantive content. The story of Joseph who was sold into Egypt,
encompassing his years of struggle, his rise to power, his reconciliation with
his treacherous brothers, his magnanimous gift of forgiveness, and his
reunification with his sorrowing father, would be powerful with or without
literary devices.

I am saying that the linguistic grace of literary devices
often adds to the spiritual and emotional power of many scriptural
passages. The same can be said for
passages in Shakespeare, Milton, and anywhere else that they are employed.

Consider, for example, Luke 10:16, where the effect of
multiple devices is subtle, yet beautiful.
In this passage, Christ is instructing the “other seventy.” He says to them, “He that heareth you heareth
me; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that despiseth me despiseth
him that sent me.”

The repetition of “he that” at the beginning of three
successive clauses is an example of anaphora.
The repetition of “me” at the end of these clauses is an example of
epistrophe. The combination of anaphora
and epistrophe constitutes symploce.
Moreover, this verse contains a super-symploce (that’s my term), because
the subtle repetition of “you” in the middle of the first two clauses is an
example of mesodiplosis, and it is embedded between the uses of anaphora and
epistrophe.

The repetition of three clauses of nearly identical length
is an example of isocolon (tricolon, to be even more specific). Or you could label it parison, whose
definition overlaps considerably with that of isocolon. Connecting the clauses with two and’s instead
of one is a minimal but effective use of polysyndeton.

The first clause exhibits a conduplication of the word
“heareth,” the next two clauses the word “despiseth” (did you catch my zeugma
there?). These conduplications also
amount to the use of diacope in one of its definitions.

You could argue that the contrast between “heareth” and
“despiseth” creates an antithesis. You
could also argue that the verse employs alliteration, involving both consonance
and assonance, in the repeating consonant and vowel sounds of “h” and long “e.”

Finally, the first two clauses set up an expectation from
which the third suddenly departs: you—me, you—me, me—him that sent me. I do not yet know which literary device
encompasses this particular tactic, but some rhetorical label probably covers
it. It is certainly an effective
manipulation of reader expectations. The
phrase “him that sent me” is a use of periphrasis that further enhances the
effect of the shifted expectation.

Note also the way this tactic is structured here, especially
as I have abbreviated it (you—me, you—me, me—him that sent me). It smacks of anadiplosis in the second and
third clauses, though anadiplosis (if defined narrowly) is not employed in this
verse.

To push our analyzing even further, we might say that the
progression from “you” (the seventy) to “me” (Christ) to “him that sent me”
(the Father) creates an ascending gradation—or, more specifically, an auxesis.

All of these literary devices are operating in this one
short verse, yet they are used subtly, naturally, gracefully, without
distracting the reader or detracting from the message, without any gaudy cluttering of
words, without obscuring the idea conveyed.
They slip by the untrained eye or ear unnoticed, yet something subtle
resonates in the heart of the person reading or hearing them.

The verse has meaningful substantive content without the
literary devices. It teaches a profound
principle relating to missionary work and the delegation of divine authority—to
reject Christ’s ministers is to reject both Christ and God the Father.

The literary devices add beautiful form to this insightful
substance, thereby compounding the verse’s power. The graceful language does draw some
attention to itself, but in a good way, because its beauty amplifies rather
than diminishes the edification derived from the message.

Christ used literary devices with divine mastery, creating
some of the greatest literature in the world, and the King James translators
rendered that mastery into sublime English.

A wonderful way to improve your language, whether spoken or written, is to immerse yourself in the language of God, especially when you study not only with your head, but with your heart open to the influence of the Spirit.

Tuesday, April 25, 2017

It’s graduation week at BYU (where the academic year ends
earlier than at most universities), and suddenly I am reminded of an
embarrassing incident from my life that occurred almost three years ago, when I
was working as a foreclosure lawyer in southwest Virginia.

As if it weren’t bad enough that I was regretting my own academic
and professional shortcomings, suddenly a tooth began to ache, so I paid a
visit to a local dentist, who had the nerve to tell me that in my obviously aching
nerve was nothing wrong. It also
happened to be graduation week at Virginia Tech, where my wife was teaching, so
my thoughts were a whirlwind of dentistry and college commencement ceremonies.

After several long, stressful days in a row, I felt
exhausted when I finally clocked out on Friday evening. I
needed to unwind. My writing juices
began to bubble and froth. I donned a false facade and postured ironically as a pompous but shallow academic know-it-all. Suddenly from deep within the abyss of my
disturbed mind erupted forth the following nearly incoherent nonsense, which I
promptly posted on my personal Facebook page and which I reproduce here
(slightly tweaked) for the benefit of the curious, as well as those in the psychological
sciences.

*****START OF WACKY RAVINGS FROM 2014*****

May 23, 2014

A Time for Reflection upon Robes, Ribbons, and
Self-Congratulating Intellectual Windbags

During this special season of commencement ceremonies and
politically correct platitudes and persecutions, I would like to take this
opportunity to bestow upon myself yet another academic title. Therefore, by these various and sundry
presents, and without omitting the requisite excessive prolix legalisms and
other verbiage—(pleonastic and bombastic, I always say!)—I hereby give,
enfeoff, bargain and sell, lease and release, surrender, remise, bequeath,
devise, yield up, alienate, confirm, assign, covenant to stand seised,
quitclaim, grant, convey, and with all other conceivable and inconceivable
banal and bogus blather confer upon myself the most exalted degree of Honorary
Doctor of Hypochondria. (What would a
little lawyer be if he could not plaster the printed page with a pleasing
plethora of platitudinous pleonasms?)

Thank you, thank you.
Oh, you’re too kind. Stop,
really—the applause is embarrassing!
Please, I beg you, all of you.
And I thank you all again with gushing gratitude for being here on this
delightful day when everything is exclusively about me. From now on, you beloved bootlicking lackeys
may refer most obsequiously to yours truly as Herr Doktor A. J. Extraordinaire.

Two years ago my distinguished colleagues honored me as the
grand pooh-bah valedictorian of valetudinarians for my groundbreaking and
seminal master’s thesis entitled “Suicide by Sucrose Saturation of the
Overloaded Liver, Pancreas, and Kidneys of the Aging and Soon-to-Be-Crepitating
American Alpha Male: A Delicate Disquisition on Gluttony-Induced Diabetes for
Practitioners of Post-Gestational Geriatric Gerontology.”

Flattered though I was back then, now I can strut my freshly
unfurled feathers as a hyperbolic hypochondriac of the highest rank. Move over, Mr. Peabody—the prancing peacock
is on parade!

And just what exactly, you may ask, has prompted this great
achievement?

A visit to the dentist’s office.

I lay supine, comfortably reclined and fully
self-satisfied upon the examination chair, and tried my best to convince that
dentist and his hygienist that I had tooth decay and cavities and all kinds of
chronic calamities of the oral extraction, but they would not believe it. Just as I had desperately attempted to
convince a medical doctor prior to my master’s thesis two years ago that I
teetered on the brink of death as a hopelessly sick man. But he would have none of it either.

I went to law school for four years and achieved an astounding
mediocrity in the one-part science, nine-parts art, and ninety-parts chutzpah
of jurisprudence. My broad spread of grades
proves it. That simple fact makes me an
expert on absolutely everything, both within and outside of my specialty,
including the mercurial medical sciences—physical, mental, dental, and
parental.

What is with these ignoramus healthcare people? I sashayed on into that shiny-tooled office
and poured forth my vast knowledge of endodontics, Hooked-on-Phonics, and
highfalutin histrionics, trying to help this so-called doctor to understand how
to do his job, but in the end, all that he and his pleasant assistant could do
was to tell me that I brush my teeth too much.
Then they quietly and politely, but also most impatiently, ushered me
out the door.

“Hacks! Charlatans!”
I yelled over my shoulder as I stomped off in a huff. Nobody ever listens to me. It was just like the time I was lecturing an
engineer about how to build a supersonic airplane, like the time I was
explaining to a nuclear physicist how to improve H-bomb design, or the time I
was explicating the intricacies of heart surgery to a cardiologist friend of
mine. Here I am trying to make the world
a better place, and no one will listen to me.

Sometimes I feel that I am the only person in the whole
world who knows anything about medicine, health, and nutrition. I was really hoping that they would pull out
the jackhammer and the dynamite and take care of that tooth.

After I got home, my thoughts turned toward Naaman the
Syrian, so I swallowed my considerable pride and sloshed around that fluoride
rinse that the hygienist had recommended.
Man oh man, that stuff was nasty!
Only something really healthy and good for you could possibly be so
utterly repugnant. Forget about
teeth—that concoction could blast the enamel off a freshly painted model car.

But I suppose I should not be too offended at the
Lilliputians with their X-rays, chisels, water guns, and mini-spears. In fact, it felt good to have other people
paying attention (albeit brief) to my imaginary concerns and fussing over my
tartar buildup and receding gum lines.
It was nice. It makes me want to
do postdoctoral work in Munchausen Syndrome.

But that sabbatical will have to wait a couple of years
more, until I garner the necessary resources for yet another academic degree.

In the meantime, I will have to satisfy myself with the
curious sounds of southwest Virginia—the quiet breeze laced with the chirping
of a cricket in a swamp at night, suddenly interrupted by the risible ribaldry
of a man-eating bullfrog’s rip-roarious ribbitting. Shuh-ZA-yum!
I can just picture that bubbly throat bulging to the popping point while
enormous, glossy eyeballs gaze upward into nothing. Now that’s my kind of conversationalist.

By the way, speaking of intellectuals, when the angels were
building my brain before I was born, back when they had my skull splayed wide open
before them under the bright operating-room lights of the everlasting
supernovas, not only did they leave a few screws unfirmly fastened, but one of
them dropped his plumber’s wrench.

No,
there was no pain—there are no sensory nerve endings in the brain, silly! But it bounced off the gray matter of my thin
cerebral cortex and lodged itself deep in the crevice between the two
hemispheres, where it plopped smack down on my tiny little underdeveloped
corpus callosum. Ooh! It has been impinging on my amygdala ever
since. Just thinking about it ratchets
up the old limbic system and makes me emotional.

Anyway, congrats to
the grads, and don’t forget us little people as you move on to bigger things.

*****END OF WACKY RAVINGS FROM 2014*****

Three years later, as I look back on this mishmash of mush,
I have to wonder just how much damage that plumber’s wrench did. Certainly a considerable amount.

At least I can assure the public that unlike my mental health, my dental health
is holding up—in fact, just recently my dentist said to me, “Whatever you’re
smoking, keep smoking it.”

But enough about brain surgery and dentistry.

To all those graduating from BYU this week, and to all those
who will be graduating soon from other institutions of higher learning, I wish
you the very best. In all your
ladder-climbing, remember to pause once in a while to smile and to laugh and to reflect upon
the good things in life, because in spite of life's inevitable challenges, it has its
positive aspects as well.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

The American government has the gall to call my Russian wife
an “alien” (no, that is NOT her in the photo).
My wife’s only green is her American green card and her green American
currency. We Russians know real aliens. This not-so-hard-bodied hunky stallion
hitched his ride to Russia aboard the mighty meteor that streaked across the
chilly Chely sky on February 15, 2013.
The local government locked his rocky rocket ship inside a museum
downtown and refuses to return it, forcing this cute cosmic rustic to reconcile
himself to a far-flung interstellar fate caused by this most shameless and
politically motivated forceful requisitioning.
(He thinks the Russians want his starlike rock for geopolitical
bargaining purposes, and I can’t convince him otherwise). Though he gives the Russians credit—they
definitely treated him more kindly than the Americans treated E.T., his seventh
cousin a dozen times removed.

Though green with envy that family members flew back home
without him, he shows no broccoli bitterness about this unexpected
vicissitude. On the contrary, his green
Jell-O sweetness in the sour face of adversity should inspire all of us to see
the glossy glass of green veggie smoothie half full. Instead of hosing down his Russian hosts with
acid wash from cosmic tear ducts (he could do it, too), he decided to settle
here in the southern Urals and raise a family.
A fine, upstanding, responsible young man, he landed a job as a grocery
bagger/greeter in this Russian shopping mall.
He keeps his antennae neatly parted down the middle, his eyeball
eightballs properly polished, and I can attest from personal experience that
his store-side manner is impeccably courteous, friendly, and pleasant. If I owned a store, I’d hire him. Wouldn’t you?
Honestly, he’s not a bad guy for a foreigner (which, incidentally, I
suddenly realize some Russians might have been saying about me during my summer
adventures among them).

Despite lacking eyelids, this toothless but toothsome green
galactic guru goes by the name Blinky and has asked me to pass along the word
that he is in the digital supermarket for long-lasting laser-hot love and is oh
so available!

Books

Profile

About Aaron Jordan

Aaron Jordan is originally from Salt Lake City, Utah. After serving an LDS mission in Russia during the nineties, he studied history and law intending to work for the federal government as a diplomat or an analyst, but ultimately the heavens harbored other plans. He lived in Virginia for eleven years until his wife’s career brought the family to BYU. Through his writing, he strives to entertain, to educate, to edify, and to give people more reasons to smile.